Monday, December 04, 2017

2018 Fantasy Nascar Profile: Aric Almirola

Welcome to TimersSports

Driver Name: Aric Almirola

Car #: 10

Make: Ford

Season Debut: 2012 (First-Full Season)

Number of Championships: 0

# of Career Starts: 244

# of Career Poles: 1

# of Career Wins: 1

# of Career Top 5s: 11 

# of Career Top 10s: 32

# of Career DNFs: 34

# of Career laps led: 176

Career Average Finish: 21.4  

Career Average Start: 21.2

# of 2017 Wins: 0

# of 2017 Top 5s: 3

# of 2017 Top 10s: 6

# of 2017 Poles: 0

# of 2017 DNFs: 3

# of 2017 laps led: 2

2017 Average Finish: 18.8

2017 Average Start: 22.4

2017 Fantasy Recap -  I know a lot of people will say that Aric had another bad season, but I have to disagree very much on that. It is highlighted by his big crash at Kansas, but aside from that it was pretty consistent. In fact, it was his third-best season of his full-time cup career. He posted 3 top 5 finishes (tied for 2nd-most in his career) and 6 Top 10 finishes as well (also tied for 2nd-most in his career). And his 18.8 average finish was his 3rd-best average finish of his career with RPM. However, at end of the season, he decided to part ways with the 43 team and move on. I think a lot of that was where the money was headed, too. All-in-all, Aric had a fine career with Richard Petty Motorsports. If I take one thing away from 2017 for Aric it is that he was predicable. He had good and bad runs at 1.5 mile tracks, but excelled and had his best runs at the tracks we expected him to. In his level of equipment, I think that all we could ever ask for.

Strong Tracks - Bristol, Martinsville, Phoenix, Talladega and Dover

Weak Tracks - Pocono, Kansas and Las Vegas   

Yahoo Grouping Tier: B-list grouping

2018 Fantasy Outlook - It is hard to say what to expect out of Aric Almirola with his new team at SHR. I would say that Aric's expectations should be grounded switching over to SHR. You cannot expect too much out of him overall. It seems like new drivers at SHR have a slow first season overall. Look at Kurt Busch and Clint Bowyer as good examples recently. With that said, he is in good equipment compared to what he had at RPM. Even if the #10 car get the leftovers, it is a upgrade over the stuff he typically would get at RPM. I guess to a certain extent though. I wouldn't say that I have super high expectations for Aric, but I think he will get better as the season goes on. He will have his opportunities, but he's a really good short track racer. I expect places like Martinsville, Phoenix, New Hampshire, etc will once again be where he has the most success. You can also expect that Aric will see some sort of uptick in production on the intermediate tracks.

*All stats are from DriverAverages.com

Twitter - @JeffNathans18